Bothwell hopes his players have learnt their lesson

HAVING seen his side suffer the wrath of two referees in the last two matches, Clogher Valley coach, Stephen Bothwell is hoping his young side have learned game management lessons ahead of their home clash with Carrick on Saturday.

The Valley suffered their first defeat of the season two weeks ago when losing 26-27 at home to Ulster Championship Division One title rivals, Instonians, during a game they conceded 20 penalties and picked up two yellow cards.

And last Saturday, during their 29-19 victory at Ashbourne in the All-Ireland Junior Cup, they suffered a similar fate with two men being sent to the bin for minor offences.

And this weekend, when they will be targting a home bonus point victory, Bothwell is hopeful there won’t be a repeat performance.

“I think that game [against Inst] played on our minds [at Ashbourne] and I didn’t like the boys talking about the decisions going against us last week today [Saturday], so lessons will be learned there too,” he said.

“You have to move on because you can’t live in the past otherwise you will never make progress – learn the lesson and move on.”

While they again fell foul of the match official, Clogher did return to winning ways in Ashbourne, where they suffered defeat the last time they played in the All-Ireland Junior Cup.

And they had to dig deep to achieve that win, having found themselves 12-7 down and then pegged back to 19-19 when they only had 13 men on the pitch, but they regrouped and in the final minutes scored two unanswered tries to claim a confidence-boosting away win.

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